By the end of October almost all our summer birds have left us.  First of all, in August, went the cuckoo, seeking a winter resort in the north of Africa.  The swifts were the next to go.  After a brief stay of scarce three months they disappeared as suddenly in August as they came in May.  The long-tailed swallows and the white-throated martins were with us for six months, but about the middle of October they were no more seen.  All have gone southwards towards the Afric shore, seeking warmth and days of endless sunshine.  Gone, too, the blackcap, the redstart, and the little fly-catcher; vanishing in the dark night, they gathered in legions and sped across the seas.  One night towards the end of September, whilst walking in the road, I heard such a loud, rushing sound in front, beyond a turning of the lane, that I imagined a thrashing machine was coming round the corner among the big elm trees.  But on approaching the spot, I found the noise was nothing more nor less than the chattering and clattering of an immense concourse of starlings.  The roar of their wings when they were disturbed in the trees could be heard half a mile away.  Although a few starlings remain round the eaves of the houses throughout the winter, vast flocks of them assemble at this time in the fields, and some doubtless travel southwards and westwards in search of warmer quarters.  The other evening a large flock of lapwings, or common plover, gave a very fine display—­a sort of serpentine dance to the tune of the setting sun, all for my edification.  They could not quite make up their minds to settle on a brown ploughed field.  No sooner had they touched the ground than they would rise again with shrill cries, flash here and flash there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in perfect order—­now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions; bowing here, bowing there; now they would “right about turn” and curtsey to the sun.  A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in better time.  It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white; for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset.  The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in the darkening twilight.

Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar.  Ere the leaf is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France.  Such a rara avis as the grey phalarope—­a wading bird like the sandpiper—­occasionally finds its way to the Cotswolds.  Wild geese, curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot occasionally by the farmers.  A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also visit us.  In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year.  The common barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on summer nights.  Brown owls are the ones that hoot; they do not screech.